Dáil Issues

Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

To ask the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government the steps he has taken in relation to the do not swim notices which have been repeatedly issued in June 2016 in Portmarnock, Balbriggan and Skerries, County Dublin as a result of overflows in the Portmarnock Strand Pumping Station and Hampton Cove Pumping Station; and how he will address this matter.Read More

Clare on the ‘the new Irish Water’ – pay-by-weight waste charges – and the fact that freezing charges for a year does nothing to address the massive, underlying problems with a privatised waste system.

There is no doubt that the so-called withdrawal of the recycling charge lauded by the new Minister for the Environment Simon Coveney has just given way to a spike in the overall charges which are going to have a serious impact on the economic circumstances of citizens.

Clare has been consistently raising the huge problems around the introduction of pay-by-weight, and the outrageous charges being levied by companies for several weeks. You can find copies of parliamentary questions submitted on this issue below. We have also been in correspondence with Panda on this, and our queries have been referred to the Consumer and Competition Protection Commission by the Minister for investigation. Joan Collins, raised this yesterday with the Taoiseach at Leaders’ Questions, and today other parties followed suit. The Government is now under huge pressure to do something about this, and to revoke the Statutory Instrument that gives effect to the new charges.

Clare asked the new Ministers for Environment and Arts to clarify the function of their departments and which departments are now responsible for Environment and Nature.

To ask the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to which Departments, the Environment functions of his Department have passed; if he has successfully split all of the functions of the former Department or if he has dispensed with any of its functions.Read More